How to have a One Night Stand with SPJ…

….at this cheap hotel on Hollywood Beach.

By Michael Koretzky

 
If we buy you a drink and dinner, will you stay up all night with us?

SPJ is throwing a party, and all media pros are invited – reporters, bloggers, designers, photographers, social media directors, and anyone else who’s chosen a media career because they wanted to save the world and not do math.

But if you show up, you have to put out.

It’s called a zine party, which means you can’t leave until you finish a publication called a zine (pronounced zeen). If you don’t know what that is, read this too-long tale of how zine parties got started: A Day at the Beach: Zine Party 2012.

Here’s how SPJ’s will work…

• Show up between 2-2:30 p.m., Saturday, Aug. 11, at the Riptide Hotel, 2300 North Surf Road, in sunny Hollywood, Fla.
• We’ll buy you a cheap drink at the tiki bar, and you can drop your personal belongings into one of the two hotel rooms we’ve secured.
• At 2:30, we’ll break into zine teams. You’ll have access to low-tech publishing equipment: a really old computer and black-and-white printer that spits out only text, plus pens, white-out, paper, and “borrowed” images you can collage.
• Whenever everyone gets hungry, we’ll feed you cheap beach pizza and soda. (Lots of quality dive bars and restaurants along this stretch of the shore.)
• When you finish a zine, you’re finished. Go home or crash in one of the rooms.
• PDFs of the zines will be displayed online and promoted widely, as we encourage others to host their own zine parties.

…So the obvious question is: What do you write about? The obvious answer is: Whatever the hell you want. That’s the whole idea. You spend weekdays in an office doing media work others dictate. We want you to spend one weekend on the beach, doing media you desire.

If you have questions, email them when you register – although we might intentionally give you vague answers, lest we ruin the adventure for you.

We have limited slots and a tight deadline: Sign up by 11:59 p.m. Friday, Aug. 3. You don’t have to be an SPJ member to attend, and you won’t be judged if you’re not.

See you at the tiki bar, enjoy the view…